THE WISDOM OF YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM: HERBAL PATHWAYS TO CALM (Part 1)

Nov 4

A BIPOC woman in her 40s showing signs of stress and frustration, representing the importance of calming the nervous system for better emotional and physical wellness.

Let me ask you something gently: when was the last time you felt like your body was asking for something you couldn’t quite name? Maybe it was 3:17 a.m. and you were awake again, heart racing for no obvious reason. Maybe it was that familiar tightness in your shoulders that you call “tension,” but it’s more like you’re bracing. Bracing for the next email, the next crisis, the next family need. Maybe it was that moment you snapped at someone you love and immediately felt guilty, because that’s not who you are, not how you want to show up.

So many women, friends and colleagues, tell me a version of: “I used to be able to handle stress really well. Why does it feel so different now?”

This is where I’d like to begin this four-part series, to provide a bit of guidance and join you through this journey. I believe knowledge is a form of care. Your nervous system, your hormones, your sleep, your energy, your moods - none of it is random, and none of it is weakness. It’s intelligence. It’s signaling to you.

The more we learn to listen, the less we have to push. The more we honor, the less we have to apologize. The more we soften, the more we heal.

Let’s begin our Herbal Pathways to Calm series by learning more about the nervous system. This post will be a bit longer than most, but hopefully, will serve as a foundation. So grab a cup of tea, take some time for yourself, and explore with me.

Smiling BIPOC women embracing and sharing positive energy, symbolizing community, emotional balance, and practices that calm the nervous system

What Is The “Nervous System?

Your nervous system is how your body experiences the world. It’s not just “nerves” or “stress level.” It’s your lived experience, translated into chemistry, hormones, heart rate, digestion,sleep, mood, focus, even how safe you feel in your own skin.

There are two main branches:

Sympathetic vs. Parasympathetic: Your Built-In Balance

Sympathetic nervous system = fight/flight/freeze. Scans for danger, mobilizes energy, raises your heart rate, releases stress hormones such as adrenaline/cortisol, and gets you ready to respond.
Parasympathetic nervous system = rest/digest/repair. Slows heart rate, supports digestion, allows for intimacy, helps regulate mood, lowers inflammation, stabilizes blood pressure, and lets you sleep.

Neither of these is “good” or bad.” We need both. We’re meant to move in and out of activation and rest throughout the day, like breathing in and breathing out.

But most women I talk to feel that they are inhaling all day and never really feeling the release and deep relaxation that comes with exhaling.

This is what chronic stress does: it keeps you in sympathetic mode — alert, vigilant, performing, producing - for hours, days, months at a time. And this has real effects in the body. Extended sympathetic activation is associated with anxiety, trouble sleeping, higher blood pressure, digestive upset, inflammation, and fatigue. Long-term elevated cortisol has also been linked to increased visceral fat (belly fat around the organs), insulin resistance, and changes in mood and memory.

In other words: if you feel wired and tired, that’s not just “in your head.” It’s your physiology. You are not being dramatic. You are likely having a stress response.

Why Your Stress Feels Different After 40

You don’t get to talk about stress, mood, anxiety, irritability, sleep, or midlife weight changes without talking about hormones. I don’t believe it’s helpful to separate these things, because in your body, they’re not separate.

Perimenopause—the transition leading up to menopause—can last a few years or 10+. You can still be regular and be in perimenopause. It’s not a slow, graceful slide; it’s a rollercoaster:

Estrogen spikes and dips unpredictably.
Progesterone often declines more steeply and earlier.
Cortisol (your main stress hormone) becomes more sensitive and more easily triggered.
Melatonin (sleep hormone) can be disrupted and affects sleep onset/quality.

And all of this feeds directly into your nervous system - how you feel and how you cope.

Let’s pause with progesterone for a second, because she deserves respect. Progesterone is often described as calming, grounding, and soothing. It supports deep sleep and helps activate GABA, a neurotransmitter that helps us feel settled and less anxious. When progesterone begins to drop in perimenopause, many women describe feeling “revved but exhausted,” “edgy for no reason,” or “like my nerves are on the outside of my body.”

Sound familiar?

Now let’s talk estrogen. Estrogen has beautiful, complex effects in the brain. It interacts with serotonin and dopamine, which means it influences mood, motivation, and the ability to feel pleasure. When estrogen dips suddenly (which it can do in perimenopause), some women feel a wave of sadness, irritability, self-criticism, or even panic that seems to come from nowhere. Harvard researchers and the National Institute on Aging both note that hormone fluctuations during the perimenopausal transition can contribute to mood changes, sleep disturbances, and increased anxiety.

That “nowhere” feeling is so hard emotionally because it makes you think, “What’s wrong with me?”

Again, nothing’s wrong with you. Your chemistry has shifted/is shifting. Your nervous system is responding to hormonal changes that are absolutely normal, even if they are not easy.

The Stress Loop - Not Lack of Willpower

Here’s the loop I see…maybe it’s familiar:

Hormones shift → 2) Sleep gets lighter, more interrupted, or more anxious → 3) Poor sleep raises cortisol the next day → 4) Higher cortisol makes you feel more on edge, less patient, more reactive → 5) Feeling edgy leads to guilt (“I shouldn’t have snapped”), which creates more stress → 6) More cortisol means night waking, inflammation, midsection weight changes.

This is not lack of willpower. This is not you “losing it.” This is biology under pressure.

And if you’re also caregiving, working long hours, supporting aging parents, managing teams at work, answering late-night texts from grown children, organizing appointments, running a household, managing health insurance claims, holding emotional space for a partner, or doing the invisible logistics of an entire family?leading teams, supporting aging parents, managing a household, holding the emotional center for a family? Your nervous system is doing full-time crisis management. And crisis mode was never meant to be a lifestyle.

The HPA Axis (And Why Your Body Thinks It’s Trying To Keep You Alive)

You’ll sometimes hear people talk about the HPA axis. That stands for hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis. You don’t need to memorize that. What matters is this:

The HPA axis is your stress command center. It’s the conversation between your brain and your adrenal glands (the little hats that sit on top of your kidneys and pump out cortisol). When your body perceives a threat - and “threat” can mean a sharp email, financial worry, care giving burnout, or an unsafe boss - this axis turns on the sympathetic response to help protect you.

In short: your body isn’t being “difficult.” It’s trying to keep you alive, in the only language it knows. But this system was designed for real, immediate danger (running from something, surviving something), not open-ended, never-ending mental load. Chronic activation of the HPA axis can lead to anxiety, irritability, digestive issues, headaches, lowered immunity, and difficulty sleeping.

Bio-individuality: Why No Two Women Are The Same - And Why This Matters

One of the pillars of integrative and functional nutrition: bio-individuality. It’s my north star when working with coaching clients.

Bio-individuality basically means: you are not replicated anywhere else in the world. Your gut health, hormone rhythm, blood sugar response, sleep patterns, trauma history, your inherited resilience, work schedule, responsibilities, grief, joy - they’re yours. So, of course, your nervous system speaks in your unique voice.

That’s why chamomile knocks one woman out and makes another feel oddly wired. Why magnesium baths help your friend and do nothing for you. Why one person can sip coffee at 4 pm and sleep, and another can’t look at dark chocolate after lunch without being up all night.

Remember this:

All bodies don’t process stress the same way.
All bodies don’t process hormones the same way.
All bodies don’t discharge tension the same way.

Instead of seeing this as frustrating, I would like to encourage you to see this as a source of power. Because if you give yourself permission to be bio-individual, you stop trying to “fix” yourself to match someone else’s template, and you start getting curious about your own patterns.

Invitation:

For one week, gently track:

How you slept (hours, quality, how you felt waking up)
Your stress moments (not judgment, just noticing the spike)
Your food rhythm (long stretches without eating? sugar bursts? comfort meals?)
Caffeine (including “just green tea”)
Where in your body you hold tension (jaw, chest, stomach, shoulders)

And then ask:

When did I feel most supported today?
When did I crash?
When did I feel like myself again?

This isn’t about control. It’s about listening. Yep. It’s a real thing. Sometimes called interoception. Interoception is the body’s ability to sense, interpret, and integrate signals from inside itself, providing awareness of internal states like hunger, thirst, or a racing heart. Often called the “eighth sense,” it works by processing signals from organs and systems, allowing us to understand how we feel and helping us to regulate our emotions and make decisions. This “inner sense” is critical for our overall well-being and can also impact our mental health.

When you listen to your body, you can respond with care instead of reacting with frustration. You can say, “Oh, I always wake at 3:30 am after the days I skip dinner and then snack at 10 pm,” or “My Sunday stomach tightness always happens after I talk to that one relative,” or “I feel calmer on days I take 10 minutes alone after work before I walking into my next role.”

Listening lets you intervene earlier, more gently. Listening is medicine.

A group of BIPOC women laughing and connecting mindfully, embodying the calm and balance that come from nervous system regulation — guided by Inhalene Wellness and Health Coaching.

Women’s Lineages Of Care: We’ve Always Known How To Soothe

Long before “cortisol management,” women brewed lemon balm and chamomile to “settle the nerves,” drew lavender baths for grief, massaged temples with infused oil when a woman couldn’t rest, hummed lullabies and prayers (which we now know stimulate the vagus nerve, a key pathway of parasympathetic calm).

This matters. The medical system has not always treated women with gentleness, belief, or urgency. Historically, women turned to other women first because other women listened. Community care wasn’t just culture - it was safety - it was survival.

What I hope to do with Inhalene, with Seeds of Wellness, and together with you and this community, is to reclaim our lineage as healers and wise women. Rest is not laziness, it’s ancestral. Gentle herbal support is not indulgent, it’s practical. Asking for quiet is not selfish, it’s stabilizing. Slowing down isn’t quitting—it’s coming home to steady ground.

You are allowed to rest.
You are allowed to restore.
You are allowed to become less available for harm.

What Actually Helps (Realistic Practices For Daily Calm)

Exhale-focused breathing. Inhale for 4, exhale for 7–8 (10 breaths). This tells the vagus nerve, “We are safe,” lowering heart rate and blood pressure.
Humming or gentle vocalizing. Vibration around the vagus nerve can usher the body out of panic and into presence.
Warm herbal tea in the evening. Classic calming nervines—lemon balm, chamomile, lavender—have long been used to relax digestion, quiet mental chatter, and prepare the body for sleep. We’ll go deeper into these herbs in Part 2 of Herbal Pathways to Calm.

Safety note: Herbs can interact with medications (SSRIs, sedatives, thyroid meds, etc.). If you’re pregnant, nursing, or on medication, please consult your clinician before trying the herbal remedies which I share in any of my Seeds of Wellness blog posts.

Light boundaries around screens at night. Blue light and stress input (news, email, doom-scrolling) late in the evening disrupt melatonin and cortisol rhythms and are linked to sleep disturbance.
Reminding your body of belonging. Touch matters: hand on heart, one palm on chest and one on belly, gentle massage of jaw or temples. Your nervous system responds to safe touch—including your own.

These aren’t five-minute fixes. These practices slowly retrain your body to remember that not every situation is an emergency. And that, for so many of us, is the work.

Try This Week: Evening Downshift Ritual (10–15 minutes)

Step 1 — Brew. An herbal tea—lemon balm + chamomile—or simply warm lemon water.
Step 2 — Breathe. One hand on chest, one on belly. Inhale 4, exhale 7. Ten breaths.
Step 3 — Affirm. Say quietly: “My body is allowed to rest. My body is allowed to feel safe.”

Do this for three nights. Notice: How do I fall asleep? How do I wake up? How does my morning mood feel?

Reflection / Journaling Prompt

Where in my day does my nervous system feel most under attack—and where does it feel most safe?
Who or what helps my body soften?
What is one place (physical or emotional) where I could let myself exhale a little more this week?

Write without editing, without judging. Just notice.

You Are Not Broken. You Are Adapting.

Perimenopause and menopause aren’t the end of you; they’re a transition in how energy is managed, how hormones are cycled, how the nervous system responds to the world. Some days it feels like chaos. Some days it’s brutal. Some days you won’t recognize yourself. Underneath the symptoms is an invitation to renegotiate how you live in your body:

“I will not run 24/7 anymore.”
“I need deeper rest.”
“I need steady nourishment.”
“I need softness, not just survival.”
“I need support.”

In Part 2, we’re going to meet the herbs traditionally called nervines - the soft, steady, calming plant allies that help settle the nervous system, ease anxious spiraling, and support sleep. These are the teas your grandmother made. These are the plants that traveling midwives and community healers carried in jars and cloth bundles. We’ll talk about four of them - how they work, how to prepare them, and when they may be helpful for you.

Sources

McEwen, B., Stress, adaptation, and disease. Annual Review of Medicine(Chronic stress & cortisol dysregulation linked to sleep disturbance, anxiety, and visceral fat.)
National Institute on Aging (NIA), What is perimenopause? and menopause transition research, updated 2024. (Hormone fluctuations during perimenopause can affect sleep and mood.)
Harvard Health Publishing. Mood changes during perimenopause and menopause (2023–2024). (Links between estrogen changes and anxiety/irritability; sleep disruption in midlife women.)
Romm, Aviva, MD. Hormone Intelligence. (Progesterone, GABA, calm/sleep support in perimenopause.)
Mosconi, Lisa, PhD. The XX Brain. (Estrogen’s relationship to serotonin, cognition, and mood in women.)
Porges, Stephen. Polyvagal Theory. (Vagus nerve, safety responses; breath/humming to shift nervous system state.)
Rose, Rosalee de la Forêt, Alchemy of Herbs. (Traditional uses of chamomile, lemon balm, and other calming herbs for nervous system support and sleep.)
National Sleep Foundation. Sleep and light exposure guidance. (Blue light exposure can disrupt melatonin production and delay sleep onset.)